The Attitude of Christians as to Peace and War

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12

THE ADVOCATE OF PEACE.

January,

our children the arts of peace, in the crafty ingenuity of
our inventors, worthy of the Borgias and Torquemadas
at their worst, in the devotion of noble young men to
long careers of destruction? And it may at least be
said of common murderers that they pay their own ex-
penses and buy .their own weapons, but I, who abhor
this whole bloody business, am forced to contribute to
war after war, and my own money is applied to ends
which I abominate and detest. No assassin has ever
obliged me to supply funds for the furtherance of his
designs, nor to affix hateful stamps adorned with pictures
of his infernal engines to my bank cheques.

There is just one way to " stamp out " anarchy, and
that is, to discourage violence in all its forms. I know
perfectly well that this cannot be done speedily. We all
have much of the savage in us, and it will be the task of
generations to extricate ourselves completely. But the
direction of our efforts should be clear. We must push
in the direction of less violence. We must have smaller
navies, fewer soldiers, more arbitration. We must rid
ourselves of the superstition that we can, as individuals,
throw the blame on the state for the evil which we do in
its name. Lowell punctured this theory long ago.

" Ef you take a sword and dror it,
An' go stick a feller thru,
Guv'ment ain't to answer for it,
God'll send the bill to you."

If, instead of seeking to put down in ourselves and in
our nation the spirit of violence, we encourage it, and
strive to increase it, we are bent towards anarchy, and
our tears over the bier of the President are crocodile's
tears. It is conceivable that many red-handed lynchers
in the South were horrified at the assassination, — men
who, when they could not find the "nigger" they
wanted, burned " any old nigger " that came along. We
may well question their right to take exception to any
crime, however terrible. But are we, who make war one
of the chief ends of the state, who set up a department
of anarchy and are prouder of it than of any other of our
industries, — are we in a much better plight ? Let us be
honest : we are not. If we intend to advance farther
along the path of licensed dynamite, let us frankly admit
that at heart we are anarchists, and let us call our next
torpedo boat the "Czolgosz" and our next battleship the
" Anarchy," and the next one thereafter the " Hell."
There will be no doubt then about the anarchic character
of our designs.

liHINEBECK, N. Y.

The Attitude of Christians as to Peace
and War.*

BY DR. JESSE II. HOLMES.

Christianity met with a great disaster early in its
career — a disaster largely made possible by its rapid
spread — in that it came to be officially recognized as
a state religion. In its inception Christianity was
particularly marked by its strong appeal to the indi-
vidual. We cannot in our day fully grasp the origi-
nality displayed by its founders in turning their backs

* This paper was read at the American Friends Peace Conference in
Piladelphia, December 12.

upon gods who dealt with mankind by the wholesale,
as races or nations, and turning to God who speaks to
the individual soul, and for whom not the nation, but
the man, is the unit. Such conception is not, of course,
a new one as presented by Jesus and his followers ; it
was present in the minds of many of the prophets, and
was not unknown among ancient philosophies.

HOW THE (lOSI'EL OF THE KINGDOM MADE ITS WAY.

But such idea of God was fundamental in Chris-
tianity. It was not to Jew's, not to Gentiles, not to
rich or poor, not to great or small, but to individual
men that was preached the gospel of the kingdom
within us. For three centuries it made its way amid
persecution and against opposition, passing on from
soul to soul, uplifting the slave and humbling the mas-
ter, illuminating the wrecks of old philosophies, and
bringing back to life a zest and interest which it had
in large measure lost. In those three centuries it
had honeycombed the Empire. Slave had whispered
the gospel to his fellow-slave, or perhaps timidly to
a kindly master. It circulated in the arteries of trade,
it was talked in the streets, it grew even when hunted
into the catacombs. In all this it was taught only as
man to man. It was backed by no great official power,
but represented in all that it accomplished its own
native force and energy. Where it won its way it was
by mastering the consciences of men. It had no prizes
to offer by which to tempt the time-server. Only a
fervent conviction of truth, only a deadly (or, rather, a
truly living) earnestness could induce men to ally them-
selves with a proscribed sect. We may hardly doubt
that the Christian Church of this time was made up of
real Christians; they had stood the test of fire, and with
only a natural human alloy of baser metal, they had
been proved sterling metal.

It was under such circumstances that disaster fell
upon it, in the form of an unhoped-for and dazzling
success — the Empire became officially Christian. The
old and well-worn temptation rejected by Jesus himself
was now offered to his Church, and it fell. "All the
kingdoms of the earth will I give thee" might have been
the language of Constantine when he made the Roman
empire Christian in name. And what great things
might not the Church of the Christ do with all the king-
doms of the earth ? The vision of a new heaven and a
new earth so dazzled the bishops of the fourth century
that they forgot to notice the small and apparently
insignificant condition annexed, " If thou wilt fall down
and worship me." Not for the first time was a dis-
tinctive price unnoticed in the glory of immediate
possession. Christianity received the kingdoms of the
earth, and fell down before Satan.

A NOMINAL, OFFICIAL CHRISTIANITY.

Thenceforth there were princes in the household of
Him who was " meek and lowly " ; thenceforth Chris-
tianity went forth, sword in hand, to conquer heathendom,
not for the Christ-spirit, but for a nominal Christianity.
The Church turned from men to man. It baptized nations,
indeed, after it had conquered them, — baptizing with
water, and, indeed, with fire also, — but neglecting the bap-
tism of the Holy Spirit. Only incidentally, and in small
measure, did it spread abroad the spirit of the Master.

190:

THE ADVOCATE OF PEACE.

ia

Those methods which had made Christianity so great a
power that the Empire was forced to adopt its name
were neglected for those which had produced the very
weakness under which the Empire suffered. The Church
chose the way of the devil to reach the ends of God,
taking no warning, as they might for the very ease of
the journey, that they had left the straight and narrow
for the broad and easy way.

Christianity broke up into warring sects. It dealt
with principalities and powers ; its eye became keen for
estates, and it dealt in souls mainly by wholesale.
Almost every generation, indeed, has seen small groups
of individuals breaking away from the evil of official
religion, and striving for a return to the spirit of Chris-
tianity — to a direct walk with God, a direct communing
with his self-revealings. But, seeing the supreme
success of the Master's failure, the crown of martyrdom
is no longer offered beyond a certain point. So soon as
Christianity becomes strong enough to be dangerous the
kingdoms of the earth are offered again, and still this
bait is taken. Protestantism, Calvinism, Puritanism,
have in turn denied God in spirit while defining and
explaining him in words.

I would not be understood as indicating that Chris-
tianity has been altogether lost, altogether a failure —
so far from it that it has always been and is to-day the
leaven of human life. Its representatives have been,
and are, few and weak in worldly power, but they have
been, and are, the hope of the world. And the long
look over the centuries since Christianity was Roman-
ized by a pretence of Christianizing Rome does not tend
to discouragement. More and more, century by century,
men have caught at God's personal fatherhood and
man's brotherhood as the great facts of the divine
message — at love as the fulfilling of the law. " Not by
might or by power, but by my Spirit " is now more than
ever a triumphant note.

INDIVIDUALS RESPONSIBLE TO GOD ALONE.

I wish to use this opportunity to make a distinct plea
for the individual — the separate person — as the indi-
visible and indestructible unit in all matters of righteous-
ness; that we shall undo the wrong of centuries and
stand responsible to God alone. Christian churches and
Christian nations are made of Christian men — are noth-
ing apart from them or in addition to them. The whole
is not greater than the sum of its parts. Nothing is
right for us as Quakers, as Christians, as citizens, which
is wrong for us as individuals. There is no mysterious
entity to be called a nation or a church which may can-
cel our duties as sons of God, and substitute another
standard of right and wrong. If individuals making up
a church represent a spirit of force, of violence, the
church cannot represent a spirit of peace and goodwill.
If missionaries are backed by gunboats, if they collect
indemnities under threat of the bayonet, they are mis-
sionaries of that power which promised the kingdoms of
earth in order secretly to destroy the kingdom of heaven.
If citizens go forth to slay and destroy, they may carry
the name of civilization on their lips, but they are simply
homicides and barbarians.

Men salve their consciences, yea, even benumb their
consciences, by shifting the responsibilities of their deeds
to a mythical something called a government, a church ;

but no power can release a man from the burden of his
deeds. Not that all homicide and destruction is alike
evil ; not that men may not deceive themselves so that
the worse appears the better. But this is only possible
by avoiding the Christian attitude and shirking the
Christian responsibility. I do not even say that all
homicide and destruction are necessarily culpable ; but
only that what is wrong for each of us as a man cannot
be right for each of us as a citizen, as a Christian. The
righteous laws of nations are superadded to the moral
law, not substituted for it. All our duties as members
of churches, as citizens of nations, are based upon our
duties as members of the human family, and stand for
those higher duties consequent upon closer relations.
They can never release us from the fundamental duty of
a sense of universal brotherhood. We can no more,
without violation of Christian principle, build our gain,
our greatness, our exaltation, upon the loss of the Hindoo
or the Hottentot, the Spaniard or the Filipino, than upon
that of our fellow-Quaker or our fellow- American. And
it is a neglect of this principle fundamental in Chris-
tianity, it is this placing metes and bounds upon eur
Christian charity, that marks the barbarizing of Chris-
tianity during sixteen centuries. Some phases of this
essential falsehood are these :

1. That Christianity is for peace, indeed, but that
because of human weakness Christians must excuse
war.

2. That peace tends to make cowards of us, and
that we must have war in order to support the virility
of the race.

3. That while violence for selfish ends is wrong, it is
lawful to do evil that good may come.

4. That experience shows that many evils could not
have been overcome without war.

(I.) Christianity, it is said, is for peace among men,
but must defer to the weakness of humanity. Chris-
tianity must indeed stoop to the weakness of humanity,
not to excuse that weakness, but to cure it. We must
pardon the sinner ; must we also accept the sin ? Jesus,
indeed, refused to punish the sinner ; did he at the
same time make light of the sin ? Shall Christianity
trail its white robe in the mire of sin to show its fellow-
ship with sinners? Shall it do evil that it may draw
near to evil-doers? Not so do I understand the teach-
ing of the Master or the teaching of the Spirit. The
Christian is not called upon to be stupid, selfish and sin-
ful in order to reach those who are immersed in stupid-
ity, selfishness and sin. Such doctrine could never
have obtained except for the pagan idea that we are
fractional parts of a nation or of a church, and must
therefore assimilate ourselves to its average quality.

THE CHRISTIAN A PARTNER WITH GOD.

But the Christian attitude is that of an independent
unit, a partner with God in the work of subduing his
earth. His duty to God transcends all temporary human
relations; and, indeed, the conclusion at its best is a
reversal of common sense. Because men are weak, let
us be strong; because they are ignorant and violent, let
us be wise and gentle. If they exalt force, let us show
them how much more powerful is love. Of course, if
our plea is that we are too weak to stand against the
crowd, or that we believe the voice of the mob is the

14

THE ADVOCATE OF PEACE.

January,

voice of God and to be obeyed — that is frankly an
avowal of disbelief in Christianity, and should serve as
an appeal to those who are Christians to convert us.

(2.) Does peace make cowards of us ? If it does,
then Christian teaching is falsehood, and we should turn
to a new and true gospel. It is the worst of hypocrisy
to proclaim a gospel of peace as a theory and a gospel
of war as a practice. And this is largely the attitude
of a nominal Christianity to-day. Numerous pseudo-
Christian ministers have exalted the value of war as
necessary to make men brave and self-sacrificing. In
other words, they do not believe that the gospel they
preach ex-officio tends to produce brave, true men.
Occasional wars are necessary to serve as an antidote to
the effects of periods in which Christian practices pre-
vail. If for years we have been at peace — the condi-
tion longed for by prophet and Messiah — therefore, lest
our manhood decline, let us burn cities ; let us starve
women and children, and kill men by thousands to avert
the degeneration due to peace and the preaching of peace.
Either Christianity is a mistake and a failure, and should
be given up wholly or in part, or it is true and right,
and should be applied in times of difficulty and danger
as well as in times of ease and comfort. Indeed, unless
it is a total failure, Christianity is needed especially at
times when men differ and when passion tends to take
the place of reason.

HEROISM OF PEACE.

But does peace make cowards of us? Let us turn
first to war itself for answer. Peace made the men
called heroes by the newspapers, who made up our
armies in the Spanish war. Practically, all of them
were born, educated and matured in a period of pro-
found peace. But the courage of a soldier is not a very
high type of courage. He is drilled beforehand, so that
his own will shall have the smallest possible activity in
the time of crisis. He risks being killed, indeed ; but
when did taking risks come to be a high type of cour-
age ? If it is so truly, then the gambler is somewhat of
a hero too. I am not arguing against the courage of the
American. I fully believe in his courage; but the taking
of risks, even heavy risks, is not the best evidence of it.
It is the motive, not the danger, that shows a hero. We
have vastly better evidence in the heroes of peace, who
never fail to appear in accidents, in wrecks at sea, in
fires on land. These are they who take risks, often far
greater than those of the soldier, to save life, not to
destroy it. We have greater heroes than those of war,
again, in those who face unflinchingly long years of
monotonous labor, giving their strength ungrudgingly
to win comfort and happiness for their families. We
have heroes in our physicians, who so devote themselves
to healing the sick and alleviating suffering that they
deny themselves even the vacations which are their due.
We have heroes in the pioneers who conquer the wilder-
ness, in the explorers who expand the domain of human
knowledge, in all those whose lives are self-dedicated to
the good of others. We mistake deeply, we do injustice
to our race, to our religion and to our civilization, when
we grant our chief applause to the showy, organized
national destroyers rather than to the unnoticed, mis-
cellaneous saviors, who do their work, demanding no
meed of praise, who never claim to be heroes, but who

support upon their bent shoulders the hope of the world.
Glory to the builder, not to the destroyer.

(3.) But shall we not do evil that good ma}' come ? If
good come on the whole, then what we do is not evil.
It is in the consequences of an act that exists its quality,
whether good or evil. If an act has no consequences, it
has no moral element. But the flaw in the proposition
that we may make war for a good purpose lies in its
short view. The experience of the race and the teaching
of our highest instincts unite in making clear that the

REAL RESULTS OF WAR ONLY EVIL.

total result of war is evil, and only evil continually. It
is cheap and common to assert that war freed our nation
from English domination, and that it struck the shackles
from four millions of slaves. We leave out of account
the heritage of bitterness and hatred not yet outlived
that followed after the Revolution, to say nothing of the
thousands of lives thrown away or made miserable. We
skillfully avoid the question, which is a vital one, whether
greater self-control, greater patience might not have ac-
complished more with less of evil. And we leave out
of account the evident fact that the slavery question is
not settled, — that, indeed, it is perhaps less soluble as a
race question embittered by the brutal years of violence
and by sectional discord than it was as a slavery question.
Again, we fail to consider what self-restraint and
patience might have done. And our fourth difficulty is
involved in our third. War is sometimes necessary, it
is said, for the sake .of others. The strong must be
violent to help the weak — or, as before, the end justifies
the means. Even so, friends, if what we look upon were
the end — but there is no end. In a wave of nation-
wide enthusiasm we went to war with Spain, where men
were governed badly and against their will, and where
starvation and torture were used to enforce submission.
After a harvest of suffering, disease and crime had been
reaped, we now look to a Cuba free from Spain, and we
find ourselves immeshed in a war with a people whom
we govern badly and against their will, and where star-
vation and torture are used to enforce submission. Good
may, indeed, come in spite of evil, for of unmixed evil
there are few examples in the affairs of men, but good
does not come because of it. If so much good has come
in spite of all the evil, what would not the world be if
it could be brought to Christianity?

ATHEISM OF VIOLENCE.

There is no more fundamental atheism than is involved
in a proclamation that God is too weak to win his way
without calling in the devil to his help. There is no
deeper infidelity than that which so distrusts the strength
of righteousness that it must lean upon the arm of un-
righteousness. It is from this attitude of apology that I
would earnestly call Christians to-day. " Let us have
faith that right makes might," and in that faith let us
fair forward courageously in the path we are in. Let us
no more evade and pretend. Are we ashamed of the
Christ and his message? If not, let us speak it, and live
it in spirit and in truth. May we not have, in clear, un-
mistakable tones, the outspoken, uncompromising demand
for righteousness on the part of each individual before
God; the selfless plea for self-conquest, for the ruling
of our own spirits? May we not have a definite re-

1902.

THE ADVOCATE OF PEACE.

jection of compromise with evil, of deals with iniquity,
a courageous and confident stand upon the power of the
spirit of love to solve the hard problems of the world?
iStcarthmore College, Pennsylvania.

Text of the New Hay=Pauncefote
Canal Treaty.

The United States of America and his Majesty Edward
VII. of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland, and of the British dominions beyond the seas,
King, and Emperor of India, being desirous to facilitate
the construction of a ship canal to connect the Atlantic
and Pacific oceans by whatever route may be considered
expedient, and to that end to remove any objection
which may arise out of the Convention of the 19th of
April, 1850, commonly called the Clayton-Bulwer treaty,
to the construction of such canal under the auspices of
the government of the United States, without impairing
the general principles of neutralization established in
Article 8 of that convention, have for that purpose ap-
pointed as their plenipotentiaries : the President of the
United States, John Hay, Secretary of State of the
United States of America, and his Majesty Edward VII.
of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,
and of the British dominions beyond the seas, King, and
Emperor of India, the Right Honorable Lord Pauncefote,
G. C. B., G. 0. M. G., his Majesty's ambassador extraordi-
nary and plenipotentiary to the United States ; who, hav-
ing communicated to each other their full powers, which
were found to be in due and proper form, have agreed
upon the following articles :

Article I. The high contracting parties agree that
the present treaty shall supersede the aforementioned
Convention of the 19th of April, 1850.

Article II. It is agreed that the canal may be con-
structed under the auspices of the government of the
United States, either directly, at its own cost, or by gift
or loan of money to individuals or corporations, or through
subscriptions to or purchase of stock or shares, and that,
subject to the provisions of the present treaty, the said
government shall have and enjoy all the rights incident
to such construction, as well as the exclusive right of
providing for the regulation and management of the canal.

Article III. The United States adopts as the basis
of the neutralization of such ship canal the following
rules substantially as embodied in the Convention of
Constantinople, signed the 28th of October, 1888, for the
free navigation of the Suez canal, that is to say :

1. The canal shall be free and open to the vessels of
commerce and of war of all nations observing these rules,
on terms of entire equality, so that there shall be no dis-
crimination against any such nation, or its citizens or
subjects, in respect of the conditions or charges of traffic
or otherwise. Such conditions and charges of traffic
shall be just and equitable.

2. The canal shall never be blockaded, nor shall any
right of war be exercised nor any act of hostility be com-
mitted within it. The United States, however, shall be
at liberty to maintain such military police along the canal
as may be necessary to protect it against lawlessness and
disorder.

3. Vessels of war of a belligerent shall not revictual

nor take any stores in the canal except so far as may be
strictly necessary ; and the transit of such vessels through
the canal shall be effected with the least possible delay,
in accordance with the regulations in force, and with
only such intermission as may result from the necessities
of the service. Prizes shall be in all respects subject to
the same rules as vessels of war of the belligerents.

4. No belligerent shall embark or disembark troops,
munitions of war, or warlike materials in the canal, except
in case of accidental hindrance of the transit, and in such
case the transit shall be resumed with all possible dis-
patch.

5. The provisions of this article shall apply to waters
adjacent to the canal, within three marine miles of either
end. Vessels of war of a belligerent shall not remain in
such waters longer than twenty-four hours at any one
time except in case of distress, and in such case shall
depart as soon as possible ; but a vessel of war of one
belligerent shall not depart within twenty-four hours
from the departure of a vessel of war of the other
belligerent.

6. The plant, establishments, buildings and all works
necessary to the construction, maintenance and operation
of the canal shall be deemed to be parts thereof for the
purposes of this treaty, and in time of war, as in time of
peace, shall enjoy complete immunity from attack or
injury by belligerents, and from acts calculated to impair
their usefulness as part of the canal.

Article IV. It is agreed that no change of territorial
sovereignty or of international relations of the country
or countries traversed by the before-mentioned canal
shall affect the general principles of neutralization or the
obligations of the high contracting parties under the
present treaty.

Article V. The present treaty shall be ratified by
the President of the United States, by and with the
advice and consent of the Senate thereof, and by his
Britannic majesty; and the ratifications shall be ex-
changed at Washington or at London at the earliest pos-
sible time within six months from the date hereof.

In faith whereof the respective plenipotentiaries have
signed this treaty and hereunto affixed their seals.

Done in duplicate at Washington, the eighteenth day
of November, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine
hundred and one.

John Hay, (Seal)

Pauncefote. (Seal)

New Books.

International Law. By G. G. Wilson, Ph.D.,
and George F. Tucker, Ph.D. New York: Silver,
Burdett & Co. Octavo. Cloth. 450 pages.

This work of 450 pages, by Dr. Wilson of Brown
University and Dr. Tucker, formerly reporter of de-
cisions of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, is
intended only as an introduction to the study of inter-
national law, and will be found an excellent work for
those just commencing the subject. It gives a brief
review of the history and general scope of international
law, and then takes up the subject of the " Persons in
International Law," namely, states, and their relations
one to another. In Part III. on the " International Law